[Walter Soyka]

Unfortunately, CC Cylinder thinks in pixels, not vectors. You might be able to Auto Trace [link] to derive masks from the animation, but it may not be a very clean or lightweight solution.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[mustafa hos] “what i am trying to archive is applying an effect direcly to source file but apperanly there is no much a thing in ae.”

Select the footage item in the Project Panel, right-click, and choose “Replace with precomp (used x time(s)).” This will create one new precomp for your footage, and replace every instance of the footage with that precomp throughout the project. You can then apply your effects to the footage inside that new precomp and it will ripple throughout the project, just like a Master Clip Effect in Premiere.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

In the Render Queue, you can twirl open the Current Render to get a more detailed idea of what’s going on, like in this screenshot:

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

What error do you get?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Overwriting source files during render is a little bit like a snake eating its own tail, right? How can Ae use the same file for input and output?

Maybe just render to a subfolder, then copy and overwrite the source files when the render completes?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Dave LaRonde] “Never mind that clients still specify the missing codecs and care not one bit why they’re no longer supported…”

I understand that this has very quickly become our problem as content creators, but the story for how we ended up here is not quite what you’d think as a Creative Cloud user opening Ae v15.1 and getting a nasty surprise.

[Dave LaRonde] “Surprise! Adode dropped support of a great many Quicktime codecs! The last version to have them was CC 15.0.”

_Apple_ dropped QuickTime.

The framework that developers use for handling Apple QuickTime movies on macOS, called QTKit, was deprecated by Apple years ago. The QuickTime for Windows framework was completely abandoned years ago. The new Apple framework that replaces it, AVFoundation, which runs on iOS and macOS only, offers no codec extensibility like QuickTime did via Components. AVFoundation supports H.264, H.265 (HEVC), JPEG, ProRes 422, and ProRes 4444, with no mechanism for third-party codecs.

Because QTKit was 32-bit and Apple never upgraded it, ALL apps on macOS will lose access to the old Apple QuickTime libraries — and thus the old QuickTime codecs — in the its next release, which will only allow 64-bit applications and libraries to run. Adobe dropping support for QuickTime now is necessary if there’s to be any hope for the current release of Ae to run on the next release of macOS.

They’re sure not perfect, but Adobe deserves some credit here. Adobe has written their own cross-platform framework, called MediaCore, to allow them to continue supporting QuickTime movies without relying on Apple’s old frameworks. Adobe has further re-written their own support for a number of legacy QuickTime codecs from scratch that would be otherwise lost, including Animation and PNG.

See this document for more:
https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/quicktime7-support-dropped.html

But to address the original post directly, I do not generally recommend .MOV-wrapped H.264. The old Apple QuickTime H.264 encoder was never very good, and H.264 MOVs are not as cross-platform-compatible as H.264 MP4s. The best options for H.264 out of Ae are either MP4-wrapped H.264 via Adobe Media Encoder, or ffmpeg-based MP4-wrapped H.264 directly out of Ae via AfterCodecs from aescripts.com.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Dynamic Link is so much better now that there’s Render and Replace:
https://helpx.adobe.com/premiere-pro/using/render-replace-effects-compositions.html

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Gabe Blank] “In case it’ll help you out, what I’ve ended up doing is creating lights that cover my entire timeline and using the intensity control alone to turn the light on/off. Never move the physical layer after placing. If you don’t move the layer you won’t get the bug and I always get the bug when I move the layer.”

That’s a great tip, thanks!

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

[Andy Engelkemier] “So, I’m curious if there are any tools out there to do something like take a premiere file, and send over clips to after effects.”

After Effects has a somewhat hidden feature to Premiere projects. It’s not in the regular Import file dialog; you have to do it via File > Import > Import Adobe Premiere Pro Project.

We use that much like you’re describing. Cut in Pr, finish in Ae.

There are also a few third-party tools from Creative Impatience that can help with a VFX-oriented workflow like this. Take a look at Conform Studio:
https://aescripts.com/conform-studio/

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Walter Soyka]

Paths don’t have opacity.

You’ll have to either manipulate the opacity of a Fill:
app.project.item(1).layer("shapelayer1").property("Contents").property("Fill 1").property("Opacity")

… or of a Group:
app.project.item(1).layer("shapelayer1").property("Contents").property("Group 1").property("Transform").property("Opacity")

… depending on how your shape layer is set up.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]